The Way You Look Tonight

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The Way You Look Tonight (Jerome Kern, Dorothy Fields)

Excerpts from the WICN.org Song of the Week feature:

In the RKO musical comedy Swing Time, Fred Astaire, accompanying himself, sings “The Way You Look Tonight” to Ginger Rodgers while she is in another room shampooing her hair. Charmed by his declaration of love, she emerges from the bathroom in an old robe and stands behind him at the piano, forgetting that her head is covered in soapsuds (actually whipped cream from the RKO commissary). As he sings the last line, “Just the way you look tonight,” he turns and is startled to see her there with her lather-covered head. When she realizes how she must look, she flees from the room in embarrassment, providing an amusing end to a romantic moment, a frequent occurrence in an Astaire/Rodgers film. Swing Time was the sixth of ten Astaire and Rodgers musicals, and is considered by many to be their best. The film was a commercial success and “The Way You Look Tonight” won the 1936 Academy Award for Best Song, beating out stiff competition that included Cole Porter’s “I’ve Got You Under my Skin.”

“The Way You Look Tonight” has no verse, which is not unusual in songs Kern wrote for films, but it is a long song at 44-bars. When Fields first heard the music, reportedly she recalled, “The first time Jerry played that melody for me I went out and started to cry. The release absolutely killed me. I couldn’t stop, it was so beautiful.”

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Swing Time (1936) — sung by Astaire, seated at a piano, while Ginger is busy shampooing her hair in another room.

Frank Sinatra – recorded 27 January 1964 with arrangement by Nelson Riddle.

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Tony Bennett

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Michael Bublé – the song originally appeared on Bublé’s self-titled debut album, released 11 February 2003. I don’t know the date of this performance. The album track was not one of the three singles released. Also, wikipedia mentions official promotional videos only for Sway and Moondance (the latter not released a single) from the debut.

Such a beautiful song should, in my view, be sung with a lagato flow one note to the other. Of the above Buble is to the sound and tempo I believe to be best but I would like to hear Perry Como sing this.